Rotterdam Timelapse

In preparation of a trip to Rotterdam some impressions from the self styled creative city of the Netherlands. A curious place completely rebuilt after being bombed during World War 2 and since developing a dense layering of ever changing approaches to planning and layout.



It is also the town with the tallest and possibly most high rise buildings in the Netherlands. Numerous residential high-rise buildings are lined up in the very centre, all above 100 meters. Something quite unusual for Europe. On Dak van Rotterdam (the roof of Rotterdam) you can hope between the 360 views of the city from a whole range of the tall structures. one of the interesting tall structures currently under construction is the De Rotterdam designed by OMA.

And of course the main feature of Rotterdam is the international port handling a large percentage of all traffic in and out of Europe. This leads to a lot of traffic on the river Maas.

Book - Cycle Space

Cycle Space: Architecture and Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle by Steven Fleming is a nai010 publishers book. It aims to takle the questions surounding the rebewed popularity of cycling in the urban areas of the western world from a architects point of view.

The book is cleverly organised in chapters mixing examples and theory. The author understands to weave experience and references to creat a dense fabric around the topic of cycling in our cities today.

In eight chapters the reader is taken on a tour around the world starting in Amsterdam, probably considered the ultimate cycling city, under the aspect of cycling is practical, to New York where cycling is reported as political, back to Copenhagen wher it is all about design, down to Sydney, where Cycling is prestigious, to Singapore for free cycling, to Portland where cycling is cool, to Chicago for green cycling to finally end in Paris the city of teatrical cycling.

This broad approach aims to creat an universal picture of cycling, locally working out the specifics to feed them into a discusiof cycling on a global level. Whilst it is a big strech the depth of the local examples is actually a large plus of this publication.

Cycling is a very direct and individual experince of the city and local knowledge is key to finding the suitable route. The author is from down under and knows his place inside out, but makes an efford to get to know all the places featuring in the book. Linking up with locals and drawing on their unique knowledge is key to a successfull portrait in the book. In this sense the reports are presented as well informed, packed with insider tips.

This on the other hand also renders the accounts very personal making them challenging to generalise in an objective sense urban planning discussions are usually held. However the topic might require the exploring of new territory regarding the synthesising of strategies for the development and implementation of ridable cities.


Image taken from the book / Sample spread of the book Cycle Space.

Overall it is a well structured book with clear insight both regarding first hand experience reports and theoretical background. The reader is being presented with interesting portraits. Although it is difficult to get into different environments if your not really living it, being a local is not easy, but with great support and advice workable. It provides an insightful discussion of the cycling topics both as actual challenges faced by planning and political authorities, theoretical with references to planing ideas such as modernism, but also current project recently being built for cycling.

Te author makes a clear case that planning for cycling clearly has to go beyond the integration of bike infrastructure in new and renewing projects in urban areas. However it has to be noted that it is not enough to just reduce it to brown fields. Very few cities in Europe for example have the concrete storm flood water ways the author preferably refers to as ideal sites for cycling.

Cycling is a networked based activity and as the author of the book remarks on different occasions mainly based on en-route, in-context decision making. Whilst cycling, similar to pedestrians, one craves for the freedom of choice and options. Variety, possibilities and flexibility is what makes cycling exciting and this is too perfectly portrayed by the author already in the introduction. In this context the call of the book for separated and specific, exclusive cycling infrastructure seems not quite fitting.

The bolder, and possibly cheaper call, would bee for shared infrastructure. After all at the crossroad we all meet and have to negotiate anyway. Why not work towards a slower city with room, acceptance and respects for all road users equally? Probably because it is a learning curve, in most of the portrait cities a steep and tough one, but arguably the sustainable long term goal. It could be argued that isolating one selves as cyclists to exclusively cycling infrastructure is not only something cities like NY, London or HK simply can't possibly achieve in a reasonable and useful timeframe, is way too costly as it means parallel, hence double costing, but will not necessarily evolve towards better understanding of users of the same road space.


Image taken from the book / Sample spread of the book Cycle Space.

Progress as such can not just be pushed towards the urban planners as their responsibility. It is a mindset that has to be embedded in society as a concept to be backed by acceptance and become everyday practice. Politics and general believes have to grow accustomed to the idea of cycling. In London for example one of the big problems beside a lack of space is the fact that every body else on the street,including pedestrians do not expect or consider cyclists. They are still alien to the idea of other road users might be cycling. This is not something urban planners can change, it needs a collective effort to establish cyclists in all areas as equal road users.

To sum up the discussion, this is a book not short on personal statements, creating occasional controversies, which makes it a very interesting read. The topic is definitely timely and most of the major cities are currently evaluating their cycle infrastructure. By giving such a broad overview covering different locations the book has something for everyone. It can not be taken as a manual but a valuable contribution to the still itself organising discussion on the state of cycling and the possible reactions to it of the urban environment.


Image taken from the book / Book front cover.

Fleming, S., 2012. Cycle Space - Architectural and Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle, NAI010 Publishers.

Urban Playground

The city can be boring, repetitive and grinding at times. Its the same old routine every day, a miserable day. But hey there is no need, it can be so different. Just think, it could be this exciting world of your own. A park, an ocean a dolls house. And then the city turns into a an adventure play ground, a huge entertainment park.

This is just how Fernando Livschitz for BlackSheepFilms imagined his city. A series of shorts show cities as playgrounds Buenos Aires - Inception Park, CONO Egypt Amusement Park TVC اعلان كونو الملاهي - كونو متفائلين and NEW YORK PARK.

And remember, the next time you leave the house, think of what the city could be to you.

Manufacturing on Your Desktop

The technology around desktop production of printed 3D objects is evolving rapidly. In the past year a number of systems have surfaced in the cheap segment of printing machines.

Where it only was the RepRap self built options, melting thermoplastics to layer the objects the year before, resin based systems below $2000 are becoming available.

Image taken from kickstarter / The new Form 1 about to ship from April, although them lot ar sold out if you order now it will most likely be the May batch.

One of the market leaders in this very young segment is the Brooklyn based company MakerBot. Currently offering three versions of their Replicator printer. It work on a really good accuracy level for an attractive price. It brings the object manufacturing to your desk and can make a difference to your workflow if you are a designer.



Architecture has a big interest in the 3D manufacturing. As experts point out there is a gaping hole between the progress in software capacity and possibilities and the physical manufacturing capacities. This recent progress might start to close this gap for soem of the practices.

Especially in academia architecture has had an long standing interest in the 3d printing process. Many school have by now established a 3d manufacturing unit undertaking very interesting research towards the integration of processes in the workflow, but more importantly integrating 3d printing as part of the design process. For quick starters Makerbot offers also a platform to share 3d print object files. The Thingiverse is a great source not just for files to get you started but for discussion and advice, with each object has its own discussion channel and gallery of recreated objects. Usefull if you want to print your very own iPhone case, a filter lense case or working natilus gears.

Regarding precision a new 3d printer is about to come on the market developed and produced by formlabs. It is the result of one of the early large kickstarter projects. The team spent the past year developing and refining the design and the engineering oft he product and is now ready to ship them out by April this year.



This will be interesting to follow up and seeing the changes in practice these now available technologies bring to the everyday of designers, architects and engineers. It is great to see finally the shift back from virtual and digital modeling into the physical and real world. And here we have the potential for applications beyond the model oder visualisation objects, but for the production of working parts as actual pieces of our environment or in other words Printing the City as discussed in an earlier post.

Virtual Landscape and a Peak for the London 2012 Olympic Park

I will be speaking at the Society of Cartographers 48th Annual Conference today. The talk will focus on the New City Landscape maps under the title New City Landscape Maps: Urban Areas According to Tweet Density.

The maps are visualising location based tweet activity in urban areas and part of the talk will focus on urban morphology and real world feature to influence the virtual activity. The range of maps produced show that unique conditions exist for different cities from around the world and this is reflected in the Twitter landscape maps.

Three types have been identified showing similar characteristics. A type with one central core are, a type with several different islands of high activity and a type showing an area or shape of high activity.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Top row central type, middle row feature type and bottom row island type.

Also we have been monitoring Twitter activity in London during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Whilst this is still ongoing a first preview of the data is showing a surprising shift of activity, a new addition to the landscape of the NCL-London map respectively.

There has an actual peak appeared over the area of the Olympic park with masses of location based tweets. It is something we have always talked about in presentations of the maps in the past couple of month and here it is, it finally did show up as a major 'landmark' in the virtual map of London.

Image by urbanTick for NCL / Locationbased Twitter activity in London during the London 2012 Olympic Games. The Olympic park on the right does show up as a remarkable peak during the early period of the Olympic Games. A final version will be produced in the after the end of the Paralympic Games.

Olympics 2012 in London and some Twitter Visuals

The Olympics are in town and about to kick off tonight in a packed Olympic Stadium out in Stratford. The last week was all about gearing up to for London to this big event. There were a few new changes, including the Olympic lanes for official traffic, but also simple things like chaining the timing of traffic lights for example.


Image taken from zimbio / The Olympic Rings 2012 being shipped up the Thames past the O2.


Image taken from msn.car / The official Olympics 2012 London car.

However so far things are running smoothly if only the weather plays along. But then a bit of the very British weather won't harm the good spirit, it's the Olympics!

The venues are reported to be all set. The velodrome was one of the first venues to be finished already last year. Now the Olympic Stadium is open, the Aquatics centre plus the little venues. Also the observation tower in the Olympic Park is open to visitors, at extra cot unfortunately.


Image taken from London2012 / The Olympic Park as of July 2012. Compare to earlier stages for example in previous posts on urbanTick.

London has prepared through out the city a massive events program to go alongside the Olympic Games. There are cultural events like the Tate is running at the newly opened Tanks or of course the official Olympic Festival with a massive program of arts and culture events through out the Olympics.

The sponsors have all their own way of being present at the games. Coke has set up a pavilion that is at the same time a musical instrument. The facade is built from sensor equipped cushions and visitors can play tunes by interacting with the facade of the pavilion.

EDF, also one of the big sponsors is running a special light show on their very own London Eye. Every evening the light on this big London attraction will have a light show on display that is governed by the mood of the nation.


Image taken from gizmag / The London Eye with the Energy of the Nation light show in progress, earlier this week.

The installation is using Twitter data to feel the pulse of the nation through out the day and summarise it in the evening for a show of flashing lights and colours. The data from Twitter is analysed regarding the positive or negative content of the message. The overall count of this rating is then via an algorithm transformed into the pattern of light and colour displayed on the wheel.

For the Energy of the Nation project, EDF is work with Mike Thelwall, from the University of Wolverhampton and SOSO design company on this project, to light up the London Eye with a daily custom light show.



Talking about Twitter data visualisation another one, pretty unrelated to the Olympics has been put together recently by Nikhil Bobb. Its a lens flare sort of visual effect to let the tweets blink up on a map. Looks very nice and the map is interactive and you don't have to wait until the evening to enjoy it. You can check it out round the clock fro London from HERE. Other cities are in the list on the left if you want to travel the world on a lens flare trip. Via Living Geography.


Image by urbanTick / Tweet flare visualisation of real time tweets by Nikhil Bobb.

Let the Games Begin!

Book - Rethinking a Lot

Since the early half of the last century the car is a defining aspect of the urban environment. Pre-car urban pattern are obviously different and many scholars and practitioners have since covered the topic of how things have changed.

It is in most parts of Europe no longer as dominant as it was in the 70s as the directing constraint, but is obviously still very much present. Present not only in the way it moved and demands space to move, but cars also occupy space to stop and stand.

Parking lots are required to supply this need for cars to be parked and they area permanent infrastructure taking up space whether in use or unused. little can be combined with these lots and indeed most of the time they sit there empty, just like that, as a tarmaced free space with a few white lines.

Outside Europe in higly car dependant areas, such as the Unites States, Canada, England and increasingly Asia most lots for cars are surface parking. Meaning each building requires a plain surface in immediate proximity the size according to the number of peak time occupants.

What the residence of for example Milton Keynes, UK, know very well from their everyday experience, the perceived density of the urban environment is exceptionally low. This because there is never a feeling of closedness, of held space, because of the constant distance between ones position and the parking lots and between buildings. A list of the largest parking lots was put together by Forbes HERE.




In a new publication this topic of lots and parking is examined in detail from an american perspective in an MIT Press publication by Eran Ben-Joseph in Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking. The author is MIT Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning and as he explains in the introduction tot he book has ben teaching one of the most famous courses at MIT architecture. The course runs already for over 75 years under the title Site Planning. It has been taught by a hand full of, as Ben-Josephs calls them, luminaries of urban design and city planning, foremost Kevin Lynch, who took over the course in 1956.

Image taken from emspy.com / Car Park and Terminus Strasbourg designed by Zaha Hadid in 1998, completed in 2001.

This for the context of the book. Whilst of course the course covers a whole range of other subjects, the design and arangements of parking lots is only a part of the course. Nevertheless a subject that, as Ben-Joseph stresses, in the US not had a lot of attention.

Indeed it is tricky, thinking on your feet, to come up with a handfull of good lot designs. Probably Hadid's parking design for Car Park and Terminus Strasbourg would be one of them.

Image taken from democraticunderground / To make matters worse, a lot of parking lots are not only pooly designed and landscaped, but also maintained.

The publication is structured in three parts. Whilst the first part covers the topic from todays perspective focusing on problems, questions and requirements, introduced with a quote by J.B Jackson, taken from his Landscape in Sight: Looking at America, but also covering natural aspects. The second part covers the history and the development of parking lots. In the third part practice, design and examples are presented.

Whilst the book design is not extremely exciting, with mix of photograph quality, different styles of sketches and diagrams. its content is fascinating. The creative and playful approach to wording, especially titles and descriptions, for example A Lot in Common, Musing a Lot, Lots of Lifestyles or From Street to Lot, make it a pleasant read. But foremost the depth of research into the topic and the presentation of it in a lot of context and history make it a truly useful addition to your library.

Image taken from MIT / Book front and back cover.


Ben-joseph, E., 2012. Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The Fastest Connection in the City

This week at the Institut Architektur at FHNW we started new fieldwork for a GPS tracking project in Basel, Switzerland. Earlier the UrbanDiary project already tracked individuals everyday movements in the same urban context. See HERE and HERE for posts. With the new project the perspective is still on movement in the urban context, but the motivation is very different. Whilst the travel in the earlier project was guided by a handful of personally important hotspot locations business connections guide the routing in the KurierT project. The trackers are carried by the professional bicycle messengers of the KurierZentrale Basel. What we are looking at are business connections and how they link across the city.


Image taken from KurierZentrale / Bicycle messenger in action.

The bicycle couriers are probably the jguys with the best local knowledge there are to be found for any city. From their daily experience of navigating the streets and blocks specific non physical aspects are expected to influence the decision making process. This includes traffic, terrain, season or weather maybe. As part of this project we are planning to look into these influencing aspects.

On the other hand another interest is on how the service the couriers provide describes the city. In many ways the activity of delivering mail between different locations creates a network of connections. This describes the city in terms of links. Beyond the locations of the sender and receiver, the interesting part is in how this connection physically manifests in an optimised routing provided by the courier. As part of the project the aim is to develop these relationships into a descriptive atlas of the city linking the aspects of a social network to the physical conditions of the link.


Image by urbanTick for KurierT / Routing around Basel showing the tracks of one courier over two days. Software used Cartogaphica.

The couriers offer a range of services. Whilst most of the jobs are small parcels and letters between different businesses in the city, there are jobs in the wider region of Basel or heavier loads for which the couriers change from bicycle to a car. Beside the business services the couriers have a meal service over lunch and in the evening around dinner time. From a selections of restaurants in the city meals can be ordered and get them delivered.

This combination of business and private services makes the data collected ver rich in that we not only have a picture of the business contacts but also see a shift in activities and cover residential areas. This extended business model covers more areas in the city and the expected black spots in the urban fragment not covered by the couriers' movements are dramatically reduced. The resulting overview covers a very particular perspective on the city and generalisation is limited, but within the particular setting the results are expected to provide valuable insight in urban connections, urban networks and routing. In terms of planning this has practical application for example in the provision of cycle routes for the general public.


Image by urbanTick for KurierT / Routing around Basel showing the tracks of one courier over two days. The tracks are coloured according to speed. Red is slow and white is fast, above 30. The background shows a point density indicating locations and high traffic areas. Software used Cartogaphica.

The temporal aspect of traveling the city is particularly part of the bicycle messenger daily business. Besides safely getting from A to B the speed of delivery is crucial and directly influences not only the customer satisfaction but the daily salary of the rider. From a research perspective these constraints are interesting as to how accessible the different areas of the city actually are. The data will be analysed towards the time cost of travel from a whole range of origins. Based on speed and and travel time the results can be summarised in a time zone map of the city, indicating accessibility.

Ultimately the results are expected to feed into a description of urban space. This description will be focused towards physical quality and identity of place. In comparison to existing political defined neighbourhoods the results form this study are expected to lead to an alternative description of urban areas based on connection and time.

The project is developed in collaboration with the Institut Vermessung und Geoinformation. For the analysis one of the tools developed at the institute called See You will be used. The online GIS system analyses GPS tracks based on point density and stationary time. The GPS tracks are interpreted as heat map and hotspots are marked by the system based on the analysis of stationary time. These can be filtered based on duration. In the example below for example the no 1 (bottom of the picture) identifies the location of the KurierZentrale offices as the most important location of the map. The riders start from here and return back to after the shift.


Image by urbanTick for KurierT / Routing around Basel showing the tracks of one courier over two days. The online GIS service SeeYou developed by the Institut Vermessung und Geoinformation at FHNW is used for the visualisation. Tracks shown as a heat map. As background the OSM service is used. The numbers highlight important locations as interpreted by the system automatically.

The project runs over the next couple of month and results will be posted along the way. A report is expected towards the end of the year. Continuous updates will be posted here, so stay tuned. A detailed project desription can be found online at the Institut Architektur.

Book - Informotion

Infographics are everywhere and a lot of development both in therms of technology and style has gone into the representation of information in the last few years. It is however an old topic and through out the past century aspects of graphics, design and technology in regards to the presentation of data and information were developed.

The Gestalt Theory (Detailed article in the German Wikipedia) was developed in the early 20s of the last century or Tufte (earlier on urbanTick) wrote his much influential books in the 80s and 90s to name two.

Image taken from the189.com / Informotion project by Bryan Ku docuemnting the final game in the 122nd edition of the Wimbeldon Championship Men's Final between tennis giants Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. See the animated version HERE.

The reason for some more recent development in information design and especially and especially handling is connected to technological and practical changes, but also the increased availability of raw data and details to be turned into information graphics.

Often however the subject to the data is temporal or process based with need for background or lead in, change of place or frequent change of perspective. For these cases animated inforgraphics can be a great way to communicate knowledge. Besides who doesn't like to look at motion pictures? It really fits in with the whole TV consuming sort of urban lifestyle.



Its pretty save to say, that for the first time the book Informotion: Animated Infographics by Gestalten bring together a selection of the best motion picture graphics communicating knowledge. All of the examples are very recent projects and most can be found on either vimeo or youtube of course. However the interesting bit on the book is the context the examples are being put in. The editors Tim Finke and Sebastian Manger put great emphasis on contextual details in a wider sense. Where publications like the recent Taschen Infographics are a mere selection of great examples the Informotion book includes the theoretical and practical aspects too.

This of course makes the book heavier to read, it's also but not only to look at, but you get a lot more out of it for your practice. Besides inspiration the book provides a refresh and update on the graphic, visual and design theories as well as the technical details of animation production such as software, storyboards or size, resolution or format.

Image taken from binalogue.com / Images showing the page spread design. The example shown here is an animated infographic by binalogue showing the CANAL Isabel II water cycle. See video below for the original animation.



There is also one of the aNCL (animated New City Landscape) informmotion graphics included as anexample in the book (p.188-189). It is the animation produced in collaboration between urbanTick and Anders Johansson on the Twitter landscape in the area arond the city of Zuerich in Switzerland. The original post on the animation can be found here, the animation is below.



Of course there is something awkward about a printed book about animated examples. However the content lives up to the expectations and whilst the animations can not be shown in the book the story can still be told. Even more so that the examples are discussed in detail and help to illustrate the theoretical elements of the book. In this sense there is literally more to the book than just the pictures and lines of text there is actual information in there plus Gestalten have a website where readers can get additional info and links to the animations. The list of examples can be found HERE.

Image taken from Gestalten / Book cover.


Finke, T. & Manger, S. eds., 2012. Informotion: Animated Infographics, Berlin: Gestalten.

Book - Food for the City

Everybody needs to eat. Eating and sleeping are two of the very fundamental repetitive necessities of life. There is no going without it for longer periods of time. Food needs to be accessible on a regular basis continuously. This is as such already a spatial condition that forms part of the spatial organisation pattern of settlements. For cities where a large number of people live in a relatively small area this means its a basic element that needs to be integrated to supply this demand.

No easy task to feed a million people who generally do not contribute a single carrot, nor potato, salad, nor tomato, nor wheat, nor anything to their own daily need. Every single aspect of food has to be provided through specialists trading for something. The specialisation has gone this far as to that there is no way any of the structures would survive without the others and supplying food is one of the fundamental aspects of forming densely inhabited settlements.

Image taken from stroom / Wheatfield - A Confrontation by the American artist Agnes Denes, 1982 in the middle of New York.

Its nothing new, this has been an aspect of settlements and cities for as long as they exist, however with site and degree of specialisation of its inhabitants the task has become more complex. Today we are as far detached from the food we eat as to not knowing where it comes from or how it is produced. We are the generation for whom everything simply comes from the supermarket shelf as if it would grow there. The rest of the supply chain and especially the origin of products as simple as apple, bread or milk is a mystery. Do potatoes grow on bushes, is milk a product of vegetables and monkey nuts are roots?

In a recent NAi Publishers / Stroom Den Haag publication Food for the City: A Future for the Metropolis this topic of the food supply chain and the various connected aspect in regards not the city are discussed. In 13 show essays a range of views from food production to food delivery to food processing and food consumption are in detail presented. The core element is a continuous photo essay documenting and illustrating the topic in a wider context.

Food has become part of the wider discussion surrounding cities in the wake of environmental consciousness and the push for sustainability. It has become clear that even though the food supply chain has disappeared from the daily business of the individual citizen it is a major task requiring a lot of resources. From the production, to transportation, to storage, to recycling food requires energy. On the other hand the modern food chain poses high risks and requires a level of security.

Image taken from foodprint / Michiko Nitta en Michael Burton, Algaculture, early works.

The essays in the publication, most of which focus on a specific aspic or case study imply wider application to other situations and a such can be read in combination or in multiple contexts. With this the publication is seeking to cover the topic more widely. There is the Industrialist proposing a new paradigm for 2050 to feed the world, the chef finds answers in the rubble of Haiti, the farmer writes on how to think out of the box, the technologist of course solves the problem of food production and the architect discusses the food network in arctic communities.

Whilst the topics are very interesting and definitely timely the essays each are very short and only really give an overview of the topic. Little goes deep and brings up questions or proposals that would affect the reader as individual. A bit disappointing really is how the title of the publication is misleading the reader to believe the publication is on cities. The is little to no taking about urban structures beyond the broader assumption as that if in 2050 75% of the worlds population lives in urban areas any talking about food is talking about cities.

Nevertheless the topic is very uptodate and something that has been neglected by the broader discussion for a while. The basic food supply definitely is and poses a range of problem in many ways for the metropolis and will even more so in the future. The problems are not only production, as the publication points out if the population grows at this rate by 2050 a number of additional planets would be necessary to produce the required amount of food, but also there are sustainability problems health problems and cultural problems emerging. The discussion is launched.

Image taken from Wietske Maas / Book cover Food for the City: A Future for the Metropolis.


van der Sande, B. ed., 2012. Food for the City - A Future for the Metropolis, Rotterdam: NAI Publishers.

Book - Information Graphics

Information graphics are the subject to a brand new Taschen publication Information Graphics that is bringing complicated data made understandable through brilliant designs to a strong coffee table near you. The book is colourful with strong visual guidance, large, very large and heavy, some 480 pages heavy. As this outline shows, its a bold publication that doesn't hide behind all the various examples of graphic design, but provides a tasteful framework to showcase the many awesome examples of data narratives.


Image taken from aestheticsofjoy by Stephanie Posavec / Writing without words exploring possibilities to visually represent text.

Of course info graphics are currently trending and one of the most talked and specially passed around topic, not only online but more recently also in the media. All the large media houses have a special information design group and the publication showcases a number of these examples. In this context the book is not the first such collection of good designed information, but certainly one of the boldest in a positive sense.
The publication is edited by Julius Wiedemann und features contributions by Sandra Rendgen, Richard Saul Wurman, Simon Rogers from the Guardian Data Blog and Paolo Ciuccarelli. This is a very interesting team Taschen has put together for this publication with, whilst still being information specialists, covering a broad spectrum of perspectives and expertise.


Image taken from dynamicdiagrams by NYT / Interactive visualisation showing the changes in election results over the period 2006-2010. Find the interactive version at NYT

Where other publications, for examples Data Flow by Gestalten, Otto Neurat by NAi or indeed Edward Tufte focus on the context of the graphics, the theoretical background of narrating information as well as the actual teaching of how to present information the Taschen publication is a showcase. It is foremost about showing great examples from a variety of sources on how to visualise data sets graphically in mainly 2D. There are a few web based, animated or interactive examples too though. This takes into account that complexity showing in these graphics is continually rising.


Image by Torgeir Husevaag / Escape Routes, 2010-2011. A series of drawing studying possibilities of spatial movement under given time constraints. On the left the map and on the right a detail of some of the blue shaded location sixth path details

Showcasing such a large collection of examples is tricky in that the ordering system as to how the examples are organised becomes very prominent and therefore important. Here the editor has decided to go with a very low number of groups to arrange the info graphics. Where other publications make an exercise out of inventing a whole new system to clarify and characterise the examples this one takes the simple approach. This both refreshingly straight forward and annoyingly rough. What do the chosen terms Location, Time, Category and Hierarchy actually describe, or more importantly how are they distinguished?
The questions remain unanswered however, this does not stand in the way to enjoy the great quality and variety this collection shows. Its a book to brows, jump and flip, a publication you will keep in reach for a long time and always go back to to enjoy or indeed recharge your design batteries.


Image by Taschen / Book cover Information Graphics.


Rendgen, S., 2012. Information Graphics J. Wiedemann, ed., Köln: Taschen GmbH.

Conference - CASA Smart Cities: bridging physical and digital

CASA is running a one day conference under the title CASA Smart Cities: bridging physical and digital. The title basically explains the aim of the event and besides a exciting line up of speakers with interesting projects there is also an exhibition with interactive installations.


Image by Dr George MacKerron / Pigeon Sim, how to navigate the flight icons.

As the Keynote speaker Professor Carlo Ratti, Director, Senseable City Lab, MIT is invited. Other speakers include: Professor Michael Batty, Chairman, CASA, Professor of Planning; Dr Andy Hudson-Smith, Director and Head of Department, CASA; CASA researchers including Richard Milton, Oliver O’Brien, Dr James Cheshire, Steven Gray, Dr George MacKerron, Dr Jon Reades, Dr Joan Serras and Dr Duncan Smith



Image by CASA / Conference flyer.

This event is supported by CASA research grants: ANALOGIES (EPSRC), COSMIC (ERA-NET), GENeSIS (ESRC) and TALISMAN (ESRC, NCRM).

The four main aspects of the conference are:
Find out about groundbreaking research being carried out at CASA, with talks covering crowd-sourcing and participatory mapping, sensing using social media and experience sampling, data dashboards, public transport, public bike schemes and more. Explore a brand new interactive exhibition, showcasing some of CASA’s latest models and maps. Meet and network with academic, public and private sector attendees during coffee breaks, a catered lunch, and an evening drinks reception. Find out more about the courses we offer at CASA.

The Programm can be found HERE. Registration is on http://casasmartcities.eventbrite.co.uk/. The Twitter hashtag for this conference is #casaconf.

The exhibition part will include some exciting experimental interactive media installations. In Pigeon Sim the visitor can fly around Google Earth, navigating by flapping the arms, there are simulations running interactively on touch tables and also the live London Dashboard installation is on display.


Image by urbanTick for NCL / The 3D London NCL model.

Some of the Twitter work is on display too. The analogue Tweet-O-Meter, last on show at the British Library will be installed and a a 3D physical model of the London New City Landscape map will be on display. This model was layered from the contour lines and includes the labels and tag. With it some of the aNCL network clips will be on display, showing the connective aspects of the data. In these clips other cities than London will also be on show to extend on the perspective.


Image by urbanTick for NCL / The 3D London NCL model.